The films of Clint East­wood – ranked

At the time of writ­ing, Clint East­wood is 86 years old. Take a moment to think about that. Eighty. Six. His lat­est, Sul­ly, is the 14^th film he’s direct­ed after the age of 70. It tells the sto­ry of the so-called ​“Mir­a­cle on the Hud­son” and the safe land­ing of a pas­sen­ger jet that had been downed by a bird attack. It’s already been deemed a box office hit in the US. Glanc­ing back, East­wood boasts a sur­pris­ing­ly diverse direc­to­r­i­al port­fo­lio, seem­ing­ly try­ing his hand at any­thing and every­thing going, often with great suc­cess. His sig­na­ture clas­si­cal style remains a con­stant, as does the idea that his films are about peo­ple learn­ing morals, but are not them­selves moral­is­tic. On the occa­sion of his new work, and to make your day, we’ve ranked all 35 of Big Clint’s direc­to­r­i­al fea­tures for your plea­sure. Got a per­son­al favourite? Let us know @LWLies.

They say that Hell is oth­er peo­ple, but ​“they” have clear­ly nev­er sat through the dron­ing blue-grey wib­ble that is the sev­en-gal­lon Clin­tus clunk­er, Here­after. Based on arguably the worst script ever writ­ten in the his­to­ry of the nick­elodeon (by ser­i­al bad scriptwriter, Peter Mor­gan), the film serves up three unlike­ly heroes, each of whom have a brush with death. It then reveals how they all mag­i­cal­ly con­nect… at a book expo in Alexan­dra Place which boasts a tip­sy Derek Jaco­bi as the head­lin­er. Matt Damon, who clear­ly has no idea what’s hap­pen­ing or why he signed on to this thing, sleep­walks through his role as a hot­shot spir­it medi­um who has become so emo­tion­al­ly affect­ed by his work that he takes up – wait for it! – cook­ery class­es run by a roly-poly Ital­ian stereo­type. Throw in some very dis­taste­ful dis­as­ter porn sequences and lots of po-faced, ​“deep” con­ver­sa­tions about life and exis­tence, and you’ve near­ly got a taste at how shat­ter­ing­ly dull this thing is. It’s the kind of film you’d imag­ine M Night Shya­malan glanc­ing a beady eye over and think­ing, ​‘nah…’ Pro­duced by Steven Spiel­berg. David Jenk­ins

Pic­ture the scene – Clint is sat, mad as hell, in an air­less cor­po­rate board­room. His rhine­stone-stud­ded cow­boy boots propped up on the mar­ble-lam­i­nate table, and some toad­y­ing shit-heel is explain­ing the vital demo­graph­ic needs of ear­ly ​’90s cin­e­ma audi­ences. ​“We need soul­less His­pan­ic vil­lains, mus­cle car smash-ups, shoot-outs on air­port tar­mac, dive bar scuf­fles, sex on office chairs, and Tom Cruise. And if we can’t get Cruise, get Char­lie Sheen.” Every­one has their off days, and 1990’s The Rook­ie comes across as a movie that its mak­er gave up on half way through. Sheen shoots for moody and low-key but hits total charis­ma air-lock, mak­ing you hope and pray that mob-backed car­jack­ers Raul Julia and Sonia Bra­ga hur­ry up and slot him with their arse­nal of over­sized auto­mat­ic weapons. It’s a film that feels like its mak­er is giv­ing his audi­ence what he thinks they want, and what he thinks they want is bub­ble-head­ed con­de­scen­sion, macho dick wav­ing and antique motor­bikes. DJ

As Oliv­er Stone proved with his lav­ish, star-stud­ded, epi­cal­ly dull biog­ra­phy of Richard Nixon, an event­ful, fas­ci­nat­ing life spent in high office doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late into on-screen dyna­mite. Even more deskbound than Stone’s film, J Edgar is a pen-pusher’s delight, as Hoover intro­duces library sys­tems, sets up crime labs and pio­neers fin­ger­print­ing in an attempt at keep­ing the nascent FBI one step ahead of the crims. Alas, the results of all this toil go large­ly unseen. No-one’s expect­ing to see flash­bulb raids and run­ning gun bat­tles, but a few exam­ples of how Hoover’s work was affect­ing the spot­ty face of Amer­i­ca would sup­ply a more robust con­text for his moti­va­tions. Instead Clint sticks too close to his man, a tech­nique which proves smoth­er­ing rather than inti­mate. Adam Lee Davies 

This film boasts an agree­ably salty script based almost entire­ly around ass­es, butts, fuzzbutts, skunk stool, shit, antique shit, haem­or­rhoids and ​“using your face as a bicy­cle seat”. Yet it’s the only thing keep­ing this poor­ly con­ceived and shod­di­ly exe­cut­ed gung ho-ho blun­der, based on the 1983 US inva­sion of Grana­da, from the very bot­tom of Clint’s famous­ly long bar­rel. This – shall we say – ​‘mod­est’ mil­i­tary engage­ment is, how­ev­er, mere­ly the rich tapes­try against which Eastwood’s napalm-throat­ed Sergeant Major kicks, chews and pounds the ass­es of a stock pla­toon of goofy, good-time Marines who make the cast of Saved by the Bell look like The Wild Bunch. The point-and-shoot direc­tion gives every­thing the feel of a lack­lus­tre TV show and Clint’s per­for­mance is almost suf­fo­cat­ed by the squin­ty ​‘mock sur­prise’ dou­ble-take affec­ta­tion that passed for his act­ing style back in the day. ALD

Direct from the provin­cial air­port book­shop to our screens, Blood Work is a con­tem­po­rary, noir-inflect­ed mur­der mys­tery with a twist: its hero lives on a boat. Yes, that’s right kids, in order to sex up the boil­er­plate, Clint has his unusu­al­ly dogged FBI man forced to opt for a lifestyle of intense, seabound relax­ation after suf­fer­ing a near-fatal heart attack. Per­haps the mate­r­i­al pos­sessed a cer­tain res­o­nance with the age­ing auteur, par­tic­u­lar­ly the ham­my, unnec­es­sary detail that his replace­ment tick­er has been sourced from a female mur­der vic­tim – mak­ing his mis­sion to track down the cul­prit one of high patri­ar­chal import. Like many of Clint’s mid­dle­brow genre efforts, there’s always an under­stat­ed classi­ness to the direc­tion, and no hint of self-reflex­ive irony to be seen. Yet, the even­tu­al rev­e­la­tion of the killer’s iden­ti­ty will have you palm­ing your face so hard you’d do well to have your chi­ro­prac­tor on speed dial. DJ

Posi­tioned as The Hunt for Red Octo­ber for the ZX Spec­trum set, Clint’s post-Star Wars for­ay into ​‘sci­enced fic­tion’ fea­tures scads of Cold War intrigue, the theft of a futur­is­tic, thought-con­trolled super-jet, a series of cun­ning dis­guis­es and a hefty wodge of cut­ting edge visu­al effects. It is also chron­i­cal­ly lethar­gic, char­ac­ter­less, mechan­i­cal­ly script­ed, lumpen and almost com­plete­ly devoid of spills. But where the film real­ly comes unstuck is dur­ing its aer­i­al com­bat sequences, as Clint dis­cov­ers that film­ing gun­fights is no train­ing for film­ing dog­fights. Con­fus­ing, lengthy, repet­i­tive and occa­sion­al­ly bizarre, these scenes betray no direc­to­r­i­al hand what­so­ev­er, while the actu­al effects them­selves are – to bor­row a tech­ni­cal term – crum­my. ALD

In no way timed to coin­cide with Clint’s suc­cess­ful cam­paign to become may­or of Carmel, a pic­turesque town on the south­ern shores of Mon­terey Bay, Dirty Har­ry pt. IV – or Inspec­tor Callahan’s Sum­mer Vaca­tion – sees everyone’s favourite rene­gade cop/​unhinged Nazi relo­cate from his native San Fran­cis­co to blow away the punks, toughs and hoods of San­ta Cruz, a pic­turesque town on the north­ern shores of Mon­terey Bay. This time the guns are big­ger, the kiss-offs catch­i­er, the street-trash trashier and the vio­lence queasi­er. Clint’s direc­tion keeps the flavour of the series intact, but the over­baked plot­ting, com­fy sea­side loca­tions, rou­tine bad­dies and the par­o­d­ic carousel finale make Sud­den Impact feel like an espe­cial­ly blood­thirsty episode of Mur­der, She Wrote. No mat­ter. Har­ry was back, Rea­gan was in the White House, every­body was dead and the film was a huge hit. Times were good. ALD

The sec­ond film in what some film his­to­ri­ans are already call­ing Clint’s ​‘Mil­len­ni­al Pro­ce­dur­al Trip­tych’, True Crime remains, for many, for­ev­er jum­bled togeth­er with mem­o­ries of Absolute Pow­er and Blood Work. From their titles on down, all three are all plod­ding, stur­dy, reas­sur­ing­ly unimag­i­na­tive slabs of ser­vice­able enter­tain­ment that are dif­fi­cult to tell apart. This is the one where he’s a jour­nal­ist – a washed up, cru­sad­ing, ornery, alky, beat-the-clock jour­nal­ist. But while there’s noth­ing about Clint’s char­ac­ter or the film’s sto­ry that tru­ly sets True Crime apart from the such oth­er late-’90s legal mis­car­riagers as Just Cause, A Time to Kill and Dou­ble Jeop­ardy, it is solid­ly con­struct­ed stuff and boasts some top news­room bantz between Clint, James Woods and Denis ​‘Spuds’ Leary. ALD

Per­haps we’re being a lit­tle harsh in plac­ing Clint’s ele­gant, dra­mat­i­cal­ly tamped-down peri­od para­noia piece so low down the list, but it still feels like a great idea for a movie that lacks for a philo­soph­i­cal­ly sat­is­fy­ing third act. Changeling is, at its core, a two-way grudge match between the sto­ry of a moth­er (Angeli­na Jolie) faced with an unthink­able moral conun­drum, and a more straight­for­ward attempt to make a film lam­bast­ing cor­rupt law enforce­ment of the 1930s. Hav­ing lost her nine-year-old son and report­ing it to the police, Jolie’s Chris­tine Collins is then hand­ed back a ran­dom stranger and told to smile for the cam­eras. There’s some­thing intri­cate, even Buñuelian about the cen­tral con­ceit of the film, yet Clint too often yields to stock melo­dra­mat­ics for any true sat­is­fac­tion. Chalk this one up as a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty. DJ

It was tout­ed as one of the big awards movies of 2009, but end­ed up jog­ging off with sweet FA. Invic­tus chron­i­cles the moment where South African pres­i­dent Nel­son Man­dela basi­cal­ly tells the nation­al rug­by team: either win the world cup, or our entire coun­try is going down the can. Trans­pos­ing must-win sports hero­ics onto a back­drop of vio­lent polit­i­cal dis­cord, this sim­ple, sim­plis­tic film says that, when all’s said and done, it comes down to good ol’ full-con­tact team games and ripped white men to save the day. Klas­sic Klint. DJ

You know that noise you make – that ​‘ahhh’ – when you slide into the bath? That’s Space Cow­boys. Except in this case the bath is a warm haze of nar­ra­tive cer­tain­ty and the sat­is­fied sound is a thou­sand corn­ball moments har­mon­is­ing into a per­fect sine wave of met expec­ta­tions. This trea­cly, cask-aged tale sees four geri­as­tro­naut bud­dies final­ly get­ting an unlike­ly oppor­tu­ni­ty to become zero-Geezers. It offered audi­ences a wel­come chance to see Clint emerge from a decade marked by seri­ous, sober and down­right grim projects, and fun it up with Tom­my Lee Jones, James Gar­ner and Don­ald ​‘Duck Soup’ Suther­land. The result is a genial, for­mu­la­ic delight. ALD

Mad, Shut­ter Island-lev­el plot­ting, with­out any of the mit­i­gat­ing psy­chotrop­ic twis­teroos, makes Absolute Pow­er one of the most insane­ly con­coct­ed and prop­er­ly pulpy entry in Clint’s direc­to­r­i­al canon, and that includes The Eiger Sanc­tion. Cat bur­glars, US pres­i­dents, cuck­old­ed bil­lion­aires and S&M nooky are the jump­ing off points for a high-stakes, low-brow Hitch­cock rounde­lay of dis­guis­es, black­mail, sui­cides and Lau­ra Lin­ney being thrown over a cliff (yay!). And while it’s nev­er as taut, com­pact or heady (or balls-to-the-wall sil­ly) as it needs to be to tru­ly dis­tin­guish itself, Absolute Pow­er does at least enjoy a dri­ve and an ener­gy that sets it apart from sim­i­lar flac­cid genre pieces that East­wood was churn­ing out around this time. ALD

Type ​‘The Eiger Sanc­tion’ into YouTube and among the trail­ers, dubbed Pol­ish ver­sions and this quest­ing video review by ​“actor, writer and some­time Hol­ly­wood insid­er” Dan ​‘Spike’ Harville, the first hits you get are ​‘Racism in Hol­ly­wood’, a ref­er­ence to the film’s con­vivial approach to race rela­tions, and ​‘Eiger Sanc­tion Insan­i­ty’, which cov­ers its atti­tudes to rape (good), sex­ism (fine) and homo­sex­u­als (oh dear). Clint cer­tain­ly seems to be aim­ing for his core demo­graph­ic of Angry White Amer­i­can Dads with this one, indulging them with all sorts of sexy shenani­gans with air host­esses, assas­si­na­tions, albi­no Nazis and moun­tain-high adven­ture. Inter­est­ing­ly, the author of the book the script was based on (a would-be lib­er­tar­i­an god­head known only as ​‘Tre­van­ian’) claimed his nov­el was actu­al­ly a James Bond spoof – some­thing that would seem to have slipped Clint’s atten­tion even though his char­ac­ter is an art smuggler/​daredevil mountaineer/​sexual Olympian/​famed assas­sin named Dr Jonathan Hem­lock. ALD

What hap­pened off screen between Clint and his one-time beau Son­dra Locke is the stuff of tawdry tabloid leg­end. What needs to be said, how­ev­er, is that she remains one of his great­est col­lab­o­ra­tors and foils: per­fect as the frou-frou trust fund night­mare in Bron­co Bil­ly; scin­til­lat­ing as a con­flict­ed coun­try chanteuse in Every Which Way But Loose; and a film steal­er as the rock-hard call girl-cum-mob squeal­er in 1977’s cross-coun­try bul­let bal­let, The Gaunt­let. Clint him­self plays a cop who, of course, always gets his man, but also likes a snifter of sweet sher­ry at the end of shift. What should be a rou­tine escort mis­sion turns into a lunatic, heavy-artillery man­hunt when the com­bined might of the Neva­da and Ari­zona police forces comes down on them with a man­date from on high. The mis-matched cou­ple sto­ry­line is rote but not with­out charm, and the cli­mac­tic sequence from which the film receives its name is so over the top that it feels like one of the director’s few point­ed incur­sions into the sur­re­al. DJ

Or, White Sav­iour, Black Car. Anoth­er bewil­der­ing run­away suc­cess for a very, very aver­age film, Clint’s NIM­BY hymn to the ero­sion of tra­di­tion­al pick­et-fence val­ues would be eas­i­er to take if every­thing wasn’t so damned dull. Work­ing from a plod­ding script by the writer of Let’s Bowl (The People’s Court but, y’know – with bowl­ing) and Fac­to­ry Acci­dent Sex, Clint offers us a one-dimen­sion­al world in which every scene plays out exact­ly how you expect it to and every char­ac­ter – Clint’s grasp­ing, bour­geois chil­dren, his inef­fec­tu­al, pasty-faced Irish priest, his crazy neigh­bour – is no more than a hasty thumb­nail sketch. Grant­ed the film looks splen­did, but the way cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Tom Stern (Eastwood’s go-to guy since 2002) cap­tures the nat­u­ral­is­tic chill of fad­ing, fail­ing sub­ur­ban Detroit, is often at odds with the more car­toony ele­ments of the plot. ALD

Is Clint’s foxy box­ing para­ble, as its many ardent defend­ers con­tend, a rich, emo­tion­al­ly demand­ing, hand­some­ly mount­ed pres­tige pic­ture about the price and val­ue of the Amer­i­can Dream that will for­ev­er rank among the very best sports movies ever made? Or is it, as san­er minds have chal­lenged, a hack­neyed throw­back to mawk­ish, hand-wring­ing ​’50s pugilis­tic pictchahs that’s devoid of charm, is ter­mi­nal­ly depress­ing, relies on shame­less­ly telegraphed plot­ting and mer­ci­less­ly manip­u­lates its audi­ence into weep­ing, bid­d­a­ble sub­mis­sion again and again and again? You can’t argue with the huge box-office num­bers, but most of that haul came off the back of the warm, bur­nished glow of an Oscar win over such hall-of-famers as The Avi­a­tor, Ray and Find­ing Nev­er­land. Would the film have been a hit with­out that indus­try nod? It prob­a­bly doesn’t mat­ter, but there’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing pecu­liar and odd­ly polar­is­ing about this beloved, baf­fling film. ALD

Jer­sey Boys is the sort of film a direc­tor makes in order to top up the kids’ col­lege fund, or maybe to pay for a pago­da upgrade. What­ev­er impulse was behind Clint accept­ing this glossy direc­tor-for-hire gig, it must be said that Jer­sey Boys is a bet­ter film than the (pur­port­ed) con­text of its cre­ation would imply. Sure, he doesn’t imme­di­ate­ly seem like the right man for the job of trans­pos­ing an endear­ing, nos­tal­gic, light­heart­ed stage musi­cal to the big screen. Yet in telling the sto­ry of close-har­mo­ny mat­inée idols, Frankie Val­li and the Four Sea­sons, he focus­es on the hard­scrab­ble lives of work­ing class artists duck­ing and weav­ing for that big break. The film is also a cri­tique of ephemer­al art and how hard it is for peo­ple to be immor­talised in their own time. DJ

FOOF (as it was referred to on set) is, of course, umbil­i­cal­ly linked to its sis­ter film Let­ters from Iwo Jima but they could – and this is a com­pli­ment – have been direct­ed by two dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Where­as Iwo Jima is a lean, pre­cise look at the bat­tle for this strate­gi­cal­ly vital lump of vol­canic rock from the Japan­ese per­spec­tive, this US-cen­tric take on the con­flict is a far flab­bier affair. It chron­i­cles the bat­tle and fol­lows the sol­diers involved in the famous flag-rais­ing pho­to­graph that was tak­en on the island as they strug­gle to deal with the hero­ic stature (and stat­ue) foist­ed upon them back home. But it would take a direc­tor blessed with far more free­wheel­in’ flair than East­wood has been allot­ted to blend or coun­ter­point the car­nage of war with the near-far­ci­cal posi­tion in which these boys find them­selves. And while there’s much to enjoy, most notably Adam Beach’s sear­ing per­for­mance as Ira Hayes, the film just doesn’t come togeth­er. ALD

It’s strange that a film so clas­si­cal­ly struc­tured and so beloved by US awards bod­ies could now seem like a moody out­lier with­in Clint’s vaunt­ed direc­to­r­i­al oeu­vre. A rip­ping yarn cou­pled with a foren­sic char­ac­ter study, a clutch of per­for­mances the size of a fleet of flam­ing zep­pelins, and a nice Big Twist to talk about down the pub, the film tells of three child­hood chums who go on to have a major falling out in lat­er life. As in Honky­tonk Man, Eastwood’s film is about how youth is a great social and eco­nom­ic lev­eller, and it’s only in lat­er life, when fam­i­ly and respon­si­bil­i­ty become vital con­stituents of the dai­ly grind, that the fault-lines begin to show. Adapt­ed from a nov­el by Den­nis Lahane, per­haps the most impres­sive aspect of this baroque, South Boston-set saga is how lit­tle its lit­er­ary source is felt. East­wood always prizes chilly atmos­pher­ics over a duty towards plot mechan­ics. And extra marks for get­ting Sean Penn to wear a bur­gundy, floor-length leather jack­et. Bad­dass move, Clint. DJ

Clint takes his young son Kyle under his ragged wing on a ram­bling tour of the South­ern states of the US, play­ing a Hank Williams-like coun­try trou­ba­dour out to seek his for­tune. This low-slung study of the dif­fer­ence between build­ing a lega­cy and trans­fer­ring it on to future gen­er­a­tions makes for one of the director’s most poignant and thought­ful works. East­wood uses the father-son dynam­ic to give his trag­ic hero, Red Sto­vall, a sense of dri­ve, as he tire­less­ly con­tends to secure a spot on the play­bill of the Grand Olé Opry and, thus, a pre­cious dose of infamy. Yet the spec­tre of his tuber­cu­lo­sis con­stant­ly hov­ers – mak­ing the film less about achiev­ing per­son­al dreams, and more about doing some­thing extra­or­di­nary in order to give the life of his young son some mean­ing. DJ

A weird and love­ly film, maybe too weird and too love­ly to ful­ly accept that it was made by career hard man, Clint East­wood. John Berendt wrote a best­selling book based on his inter­ac­tions with Savan­nah, Georgia’s fore­most antique deal­er, bon vivant and homo­sex­u­al, Jim Williams (Kevin Spacey), whose annu­al Christ­mas shindig is inter­rupt­ed by an unfor­tu­nate mur­der. John Kel­so (John Cusack) is the slicked-back journo com­mis­sioned to cov­er the case, but the film sim­ply charts how he falls in in love with the town and its peo­ple (despite not entire­ly agree­ing with some of their more shifty, face-sav­ing tra­di­tions). It’s a supreme­ly pre­cep­tive and poet­ic take on the Amer­i­can south, pre­sent­ing ingrained big­otry as a weak­ness that can be fixed rather than a per­ma-rot at the core of soci­ety. Final shout out to film-steal­er Lady Chablis, the snap-talk­ing drag artist who plays her­self and who sad­ly passed away in Sep­tem­ber of 2016. DJ

“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and, I have to say, he was an awful lot like the chap from High Plains Drifter.” Yes, there are unmiss­able sim­i­lar­i­ties between Pale Rid­er and Clint’s loopy, rapey 1973 Weird West clas­sic (and of both to Shane), but when you allow for the fact that this was the first big-bud­get west­ern released by a major stu­dio since the stu­pen­dous folly/​devastating flop/​overambitious fail­ure that was Heaven’s Gate, tried and test­ed was maybe the way to go. But while Pale Rid­er sticks to famil­iar west­ern themes and struc­ture, it is very much its own film. Clint’s trim, frigid per­for­mance chimes per­fect­ly with his long­time cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Bruce Surtees’s brit­tle, win­try pho­tog­ra­phy and the cli­mac­tic shootout is effort­less­ly sim­ple, uncom­mon­ly sav­age and prop­er­ly sem­i­nal. (UK read­ers are invit­ed to check out the film’s trail­er, which is for some rea­son scored to the theme music from Chan­nel 4 News.) ALD

1990 was some­thing of an annus crap­tacti­cus for East­wood that saw him dance the one-for-them-one-for-you mam­bo to lit­tle effect. While bud­dy-cop slate-filler The Rook­ie (see above – a long way above) turned a tidy prof­it, it gar­nered some of the most with­er­ing reviews of Eastwood’s career. WHBH sees those vari­ables reversed, with crit­ics swoon­ing, even as the film failed to find an audi­ence of any kind. To be fair, a film about an alco­holic ​’50s film direc­tor going to Africa in order to try and shoot an ele­phant was alway going to be a tough sell. Films about Hol­ly­wood have nev­er gone over too well at the box-office, and the unfa­mil­iar loca­tion, peri­od set­ting and lack of action left Clint’s audi­ence (ie Amer­i­can mul­ti­plex­ers) feel­ing like they’d maybe give this one a miss. A shame, as this is an unusu­al and sub­tly mov­ing film that trades on notions of its star’s titan­ic machis­mo to pro­duce one of Clint’s best, most con­flict­ed per­for­mances. ALD

It’s hard to re-watch Clint’s 1971 direc­to­r­i­al debut fea­ture now with­out smirk­ing a lit­tle. And that might have some­thing to do with the cast­ing of actor Jes­si­ca Wal­ter, who mod­ern audi­ences will like­ly know best as machi­avel­lian dowa­ger Lucille Bluth in sub­lime TV sit­com Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment. Indeed, the socio­path­ic ten­den­cies dis­played by her char­ac­ter in Misty does make for an inter­est­ing con­nec­tion between these two very dif­fer­ent prop­er­ties. The film came out in the same year as Don Siegel’s The Beguiled, though Misty is per­haps a more straight-shoot­ing ver­sion of a coiled roman­tic obses­sion that inevitably erupts into vio­lence. Or is it just a Crazy Lady thriller in which Clint has to resort to fisticuffs and mansplain­ing to reclaim his per­son­al bound­aries? Maybe. But it’s excep­tion­al­ly well made, using the set­ting of the director’s own quaint home­town, Carmel-by-the-Sea, to chill­ing effect, and even mak­ing time for its DJ hero to take a groovy lit­tle stroll around the Mon­terey Jazz Fes­ti­val. DJ

Oth­er­wise known as the film in which you get to see Clint force both a smile and salt tears. Dialling back the sludgy mawk­ish­ness of Robert James Waller’s ripe best­seller, East­wood and screen­writer Richard LaGrave­nese pro­duce some­thing that’s so clas­si­cal, so straight­for­ward, so mil­i­tant in its unapolo­getic nail­ing of every emo­tion­al beat, that you just can’t help but be lured in. As dis­placed, lone­ly Iowan home­mak­er Francesca, Meryl Streep brings one of the director’s most com­plex and ful­ly-devel­oped female char­ac­ters to life. While her hus­band and chil­dren are off at the state fair, a doe-eyed meet cute with Clint’s itin­er­ant pho­tog­ra­ph­er and sil­ver-haired hunk (in town to cap­ture the epony­mous bridges on film) leads to a love affair that burns fast and bright. There’s no con­ces­sion to pac­ing, no unnec­es­sary short-cuts, no fun­ny stuff – every­thing here is just as it needs to be. The har­row­ing cli­mac­tic sequence in which Francesca has to choose between her man and her lover, remains one of the most immac­u­late­ly chore­o­graphed in the director’s hal­lowed cor­pus. DJ

Okay, so we haven’t allowed very long for the dust to set­tle on this one pri­or to slot­ting it right in the upper reach­es of the Clint pan­theon. But Sul­ly, the director’s extreme­ly cool-head­ed and philo­soph­i­cal take on that fate­ful, freez­ing day in Jan­u­ary 2009 when a bird attack bust­ed both engines on US Air­lines flight 1549, leav­ing Ches­ley ​“Sul­ly” Sul­len­berg­er to per­form an emer­gency land­ing on the Hud­son Riv­er, is one of his very best. Far from foren­si­cal­ly recre­at­ing the dra­ma of the spec­ta­cle itself, Eastwood’s film is about the heavy bur­den of hero­ism, much like Amer­i­can Sniper. The crash itself is ren­dered as a fright­en­ing echo in Sully’s mem­o­ry as his sta­tus as a nation­al hero means he’s forced to relive the inci­dent over and over. It’s a beau­ti­ful, ele­giac and exact­ing­ly mea­sured film, gift­ed with an astound­ing cen­tral per­for­mance by Tom Han­ks which isn’t just a super­fi­cial recre­ation of Sul­ly – he real­ly gets under the subject’s thick skin. DJ

Less is most def­i­nite­ly more in this case. Where­as Flags of Our Fathers fea­tured mas­sive beach land­ings, hordes of extras and lash­ings of (dubi­ous) spe­cial effects, Let­ters from Iwo Jima ben­e­fits from a far more stream­lined approach. While the Amer­i­can sol­diers were all well-fed and chock-full o’ beans, their Japan­ese coun­ter­parts were in hell’s ditch, despair­ing­ly low on sup­plies and lack­ing air and naval sup­port. East­wood cap­tures their dread of the impend­ing bat­tle per­fect­ly, his stark pho­tog­ra­phy drain­ing the colour from their faces and find­ing shad­ows even in the mid­day glare. Where the film tru­ly comes alive how­ev­er is with the intro­duc­tion of Gen­er­al Kurib­ayashi, dis­patched from Tokyo to lick these slack­ers into shape. In the wrong hands this piv­otal char­ac­ter would have been just anoth­er a bark­ing dog, but as played by Ken Watan­abe he is a kind, jovial fun­ster with a fond­ness for John­nie Walk­er whisky. His cast­ing proves to be the film’s true mas­ter­stroke. ALD

Every­one knows that the biopic is the lowli­est form of film­mak­ing. The excep­tion that proves the rule is Clint Eastwood’s daz­zling­ly depress­ing take on the cur­tailed life and times of skag-hap­py jazz pio­neer Char­lie ​“Yard­bird” Park­er. For­est Whitak­er has sel­dom bet­tered his lead turn as the rak­ish beat­nik who treats his cred­i­tors, lovers and band-mates with none of the love he saves for his trusty sax. Every expres­sion is freight­ed with remorse and con­fu­sion, his wag­gish repar­tee nev­er more than a front for the dull, inex­orable ache of his var­i­ous addic­tions. The focus is on minor episodes. There are no attempts made to con­trive a grand dra­mat­ic sweep. As a por­trait of flawed genius, maybe East­wood saw more than just a per­son­al hero in his dam­aged, self-lac­er­at­ing sub­ject. And yet, as so often with the direc­tor, the film achieves great­ness through its sub­tle con­ces­sions to objec­tiv­i­ty and its sup­pres­sion of hyper­bole: it would seem to be, among oth­er things, one of the great films about chem­i­cal depen­den­cy, pre­sent­ing it as a nec­es­sary, non-pre­ventable evil at the time that Ronald Reagan’s ​“War on Drugs” raged in the streets. DJ

There was noth­ing about Amer­i­can Sniper that sug­gest­ed it would become one of Clint’s most crit­i­cal­ly laud­ed and com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful movies. But that’s exact­ly what hap­pened. Bradley Coop­er absolute­ly smash­es it as Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, a man who treats war­fare as a kind of del­i­cate bureau­crat­ic task, wor­ry­ing about his job and his per­son­al safe­ty while leav­ing any wider moral ram­i­fi­ca­tions to either the pen­cil-push­ers or the sissies. The film quick­ly became a cause célèbre, enshrined as a dar­ling of the pro-gun lob­by while also being accept­ed by the loony left as a cool admon­ish­ment of firearms and the neg­a­tive psy­cho­log­i­cal impact they can have on their users. Indeed, Clint’s mas­tery with this film was to just cut back any­thing that could be con­strued as a polit­i­cal jibe, throw­ing every nuance out to the think piece cat-house to fight over. And they did. DJ

A part­ner film to Honky­tonk Man in many ways, A Per­fect World is also about a man who has a date with des­tiny and his des­per­ate, last ditch attempt to find sal­va­tion in youth. Kevin Cost­ner, chan­nel­ing Clint’s brusque, smart-ass demeanour with stone-faced aplomb, car­ries the film as Butch, an escaped nice-guy crim in 1960s Texas. A muffed up car­jack­ing leads to a kid­nap­ping, and sud­den­ly Butch has a sur­ro­gate son, Buzz (TJ Lowther), as a wing­man in his attempt to reach his estranged pops in Alas­ka. But instead of treat­ing the boy like a bar­gain­ing chip, the con­vict­ed killer builds a world of make­be­lieve, often jeop­ar­dis­ing his mis­sion to teach Buzz a moral les­son, or to allow him a treat once denied him by his strict reli­gious upbring­ing. If the film has a down­side it’s Eastwood’s attempts at coun­ter­bal­anc­ing his own supreme­ly Zen sher­iff with a female foil. God bless Lau­ra Dern, but her char­ac­ter here feels com­plete­ly token. Oth­er­wise, this is a melan­cholic, almost Stein­beck­ian sur­vey of Amer­i­ca and its lov­ably mis­be­got­ten male pop­u­lous. DJ

It may not be one of Clint’s most defin­ing films or icon­ic roles, but The Out­law Josey Wales cer­tain­ly boasts his most epic char­ac­ter. Like Keyser Soze, Robin Hood or Ned Kel­ly, Josey is a folk hero, a leg­end, a boogey­man (notice how often Wales’ face is in shad­ow). His name is syn­ony­mous with slaugh­ter, law­less­ness and the swift and dead­ly blaze of his Colt Walk­er pis­tols. But Josey has lost his taste for war and now sim­ply wants to set­tle down. With the US emerg­ing from the bruis­ing years of Viet­nam, it’s easy to see why such peacenik themes touched a nerve, and the film was a huge box office suc­cess. Or maybe such high-mind­ed talk counts for noth­ing and audi­ences were rather swept away by the mus­cu­lar plot­ting, lit­er­ate script, wicked zingers and thun­der­ous gun­play of a fun­ny, stir­ring and beau­ti­ful­ly woven film that charts Wales’s jour­ney from revenge-crazed black­guard to myth­i­cal shoo­tist to log-cab­in kib­butzer. It’s a mas­ter­ful thing, and is per­haps the most out-and-out enjoy­able film in the East­wood canon. ALD

Yes, it may reek a lit­tle of snob­bish­ness, to take one of Clint’s less­er known direc­to­r­i­al efforts and plant it smack-dab in his all-time top five, but Breezy is a dusty jew­el of a movie. Sim­i­lar (and, we think, supe­ri­or) to the irri­tat­ing, inter-gen­er­a­tional quirk-bomb that is Harold and Maude, Clint’s film tells of a bed-hop­ping beat­nik played by Kay Lenz and her slow, steady and utter­ly charm­ing rela­tion­ship with an old­er, starched-shirt divorcee played by William Hold­en. In the press of late, Clint has lam­bast­ed what he believes to be a be a gen­er­a­tion of pam­pered, polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect pussies, but a film like Breezy, which is so affir­ma­tive about the notion of peace­ful co-exis­tence and accept­ing pri­mal impuls­es, you can’t help but think that it’s all just stealth mar­ket­ing for Sul­ly. DJ

The Human Cen­tipede and Nico­las Cage’s Wick­er Man per­for­mance aside, there’s noth­ing more dis­con­cert­ing in cin­e­ma than when a west­ern goes tru­ly, deeply, mad­ly off-mes­sage. No oth­er genre is as stric­tured and cod­i­fied as the oater, mean­ing that when they stray from the well-beat­en trail things get glo­ri­ous­ly dis­com­bob­u­lat­ing. Say hel­lo to High Plains Drifter. Peo­ple (men) of a cer­tain age will have first seen the this errant bas­tard of a film on late-night TV (note to younger read­ers: in the ​’70s and ​’80s TV com­pa­nies used to rou­tine­ly show brill/​weirdo films after the late-evening news. Enjoy your YouTube clip-shows and body-sham­ing docs!) where it will have no doubt twist­ed many a tiny mel­on. Total­ly kinky, psy­che­del­i­cal­ly vio­lent and wor­ry­ing­ly rapey, High Plains Drifter dis­tills every deviant les­son East­wood learned from his Spaghet­ti­fied tute­lage under Ser­gio Leone into an over­whelm­ing­ly strange and com­plete­ly unfor­get­table take on the genre that retains the capac­i­ty to dis­turb to this day. ALD

There’s been no short­age of great movies which might be described as ​“post west­erns”. That is, sto­ries about shit-kick­ing cow­boys – griz­zled gods of the fron­tier – who have sud­den­ly found them­selves twirling their pis­tol in the dust cloud of progress. What makes 1980’s Bron­co Bil­ly such a strange and bit­ter­sweet fruit is that it offers a warm cel­e­bra­tion of cow­boy mythos, but is also pri­mar­i­ly a cel­e­bra­tion of movies and their abil­i­ty to change lives. Clint him­self essays the self-styled ​“fastest gun in the west”, an irre­press­ible big top has-been tramp­ing across Amer­i­ca in the hope that he and his rag-tag troupe will uncov­er like-mind­ed souls, those who still trea­sure the camp­fire roman­ti­cism of life on the range. It’s per­haps Eastwood’s shag­gi­est film, but also his most self-reflex­ive. It ambiva­lent­ly depicts the evo­lu­tion of the Amer­i­can iden­ti­ty (and the Amer­i­can cin­e­ma) dur­ing the 1980s, but also shows a direc­tor who is utter­ly at ease with the notion of being a man out of time. DJ

There is a sin­gle shot in Unfor­giv­en that stands as one of the most elec­tri­fy­ing moments in all of cin­e­ma. It fea­tures no gun­play, doesn’t involve a stun­ning vista or depend on a killer line, but cen­tres on a shrewish Jew­ish reporter doing next to noth­ing. WW Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek, per­haps best known as Daphne’s lawyer boyfriend in hoity-toity US sit­com Frasi­er) orig­i­nal­ly came west to doc­u­ment and roman­ti­cise the exploits of loqua­cious, haughty gun­slinger Eng­lish Bob – the Duke of Death, played with greasy majesty by Richard Har­ris – only to see him exposed as a cow­ard and a fraud by Lit­tle Bill Daggett (Gene Hack­man), sher­iff of Big Whiskey, Wyoming. Daggett is bru­tal, mean and dan­ger­ous. He has been to the places and done the things and is keen to dis­pel Beauchamp’s dime-store nov­el view of cow­pokes, gun­fights and myth­ic bad­men. He is also a blowhard and – though he’d deny it – an ego­tist, hap­py to cor­rect the sto­ries Beauchamp has col­lect­ed and equal­ly hap­py to repo­si­tion him­self at the dark heart of them. Beauchamp sees through him but is still impressed. Enter a real bad man.

“You’ll be William Munny, out­ta Mis­souri. Killer of women and children.”

“That’s right.”

Clint’s cam­era goes low, dol­ly­ing in on Beauchamp as he slow­ly ris­es, breath­less, to wit­ness Munny (East­wood, nat­u­ral­ly) shoot Lit­tle Bill. To wit­ness a moment of pure west unfold in real time. Eastwood’s entire west­ern lega­cy has led up to this seem­ing­ly throw­away, one-sec­ond shot. Beauchamp has final­ly found the real thing and it is dirty, ordi­nary, igno­ble and lucky. Gone are all of Clint’s for­mer affec­ta­tions – the Man with No Name’s che­root and pon­cho com­bo, Josey Wales’ mam­moth six-guns, High Plains Drifter’s tin of paint. He has stripped the west­ern hero to his core and Beauchamp is his wit­ness. The vio­lence that fol­lows is mechan­i­cal, hate­ful and ugly. Is this what we, like Beauchamp, have been wait­ing for out there in the dark? Is this what we want? You do, East­wood seems to say. And you real­ly, real­ly don’t.

Unfor­giv­en is rou­tine­ly referred to as a revi­sion­ist west­ern. And it is that, but it is also much more. This is where the myth of the west dies. WW Beauchamp was there to see it, and so were we. Clint has said that he will nev­er make anoth­er west­ern. He doesn’t need to. Nobody does. ALD

What’s your all-time favourite movie direct­ed by Clint East­wood? Let us know @LWLies